By David Wisner Some years ago, when I first settled permanently in Thessaloniki, I met another ex-patriot who had been here for decades already. How long? I asked her. “Long enough to think the Greek way of doing things is the normal way,” she replied. Won’t happen to me, I thought, naively. And continued to […]

The Guardian has an article today on the plight of a large number of disgruntled British civil servants. “Two-thirds of Britain’s most senior civil servants are so demoralised that they are considering leaving their jobs, according to the first survey of mandarins to be conducted since the coalition’s reform plans were published,” they write. The […]

Throughout Europe there has been an emphasis on public sector reform as the counterpart to austerity economics. In most cases, including Greece, little has been achieved. Paul Light of the Wagner School, NYU, makes a compelling case that the time is ripe in the US federal government for reform, now that sequester-imposed austerity has set […]

By Laura Strieth A group called NoMines N. has posted the following petition regarding a project to mine for gold in the vicinity of Ierissos, on the third foot of the Halkidiki region. The campaign “calls for citizens all over the world to raise their voice in condemnation against the development of mining activities and […]

By Pantelis Boukalas All those stereotypical expressions that recur in our speech probably once carried some actual meaning before losing it somewhere along the way. The value of these expressions was mostly undermined by overuse, which was in turn prompted by two apparently contradictory desires that in fact complement each other. On the one hand, […]

  “Men with guns I’m used to. But kids without books, teachers or classes for a long time — that’s trouble. Big trouble. “ — Thomas Friedman

Peter Economides has a post in praise of Cypriots on his blog. “There is no such thing as a financial crisis. It’s the result of a social crisis, a values crisis, a confidence crisis, a how we feel about ourselves crisis. And I am starting to feel that the current European crisis is a crisis […]

By David Wisner There is good news and bad news this week from the birthplace of democracy. On the one hand, according to findings from the European Values Study published by Tilburg University in Holland, more than 80% of those polled in Greece showed support for a democratic regime. This is clearly the highest average in the […]

By David Wisner Several months ago one of my Greek undergraduate students wanted to do a bit of research on the incidence of ministerial amendments to Greek legislation. We asked a renowned specialist, who informed us that governmental personnel act anonymously and are not required to make such information public before a plenary vote, implying […]

Mass protests of Bulgarians forced the last government to resign. A new caretaker government now has to prepare early parliamentary elections on May 12. But many Bulgarians have lost faith in politics altogether. Unrelated as the cases may be, self-immolations have become a mark of the ongoing mass protests in Bulgaria: on Wednesday (13.03.2013), a […]

By Krysta Editor’s note: Krysta Kalachani has been a regular contributor to Politis from Athens since 2010. She attended anti-memorandum rallies in downtown Athens throughout the summer of 2011 — despite managing two companies — and has a particular interest in the development in Greece of alternative media. Here Krysta reflects on some of the […]

 This weekly feature offers a glimpse of what is happening in and around Thessaloniki. Compiled by Laura Strieth. Thu 21st March- Milo-Z Live- He calls his music “Razzamofunk”, a combination of Rock, Rap, Jazz, Blues and Funk.  Inspired by the music he grew up with in New York City’s Lower East Side, Milo-Z’s music has […]

By Kirsten Allen From the outside, the Greek financial crisis is easily reduced to an exhausting series of bailouts, austerity deadlines and protests. But to the people who live with the fallout each day, it’s an existential threat, and one that raises fundamental questions about their identity as Greeks. These questions and the crisis itself […]

Alexia Tsotsis has written an engaging review in TechCrunch of the neighborhood social media service Nextdoor. The platform is a de facto neighborhood support group among subscribers. Nextdoor now serves some 10,000 neighborhoods and roughly 1 million households, and has a very savvy matrix for developing a local network to its optimal level. Users explain […]

By Brian Newby I’m blessed to be in a job that truly feels like it matches against my skills. There are many facets to overseeing elections, from public relations to candidate relations, from high-tech to situations that require a human touch, from logistics to statistics, and everything in between. I have a hard time considering […]

This bit was posted by a wag yesterday on the BBC web site, relative to the transfer of soccer star Mario Balotelli from Manchester City to AC Milan (the latter owned by Sylvio Berlusconi). “When Inter president Massimo Moratti said yesterday that Silvio Berlusconi would have many uses for Mario Balotelli he was absolutely right. […]

Newsworthy, I think… “Our main goal is to show that the regime that is governing Europe through this crisis is neither democratically legitimate nor acting in any responsible way for the people. It’s really working for profit. One of it’s symbolic places is the ECB – the place that has economic and financial reign over […]

By John Judis ‘Something is happening and you don’t know what it is. Do you, Mr. Jones?’ Bob Dylan sang. Mr. Jones was the typical suburban ‘square,’ and the ‘something’ that was happening was the sudden explosion of the new left and the counter-culture during the Sixties. Something extraordinary is happening now in European and […]

By Alexia Apostolina A cloudy morning in November we woke up, dressed as warm as we could with a smile on our faces, bags with pullovers, raincoats and everything else we wanted to give to those people. Heroes.  In the bus everyone seemed unsure, wondering about what we would come across in Eidomeni. Many feelings, many […]

By Maria Mavrommati The first episode of British Channel 4′s mini-series Black Mirror (2011) explores the nature of modern democracy in the most colorful ways. The dominance of image (with “image” meaning both a visual representation of something and a popular conception of someone), television language and conventional understanding of the essence of truth and […]